Vol.:(0123456789) Quality & Quantity https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-020-00993-9 1 3 Is risk attitude toward health outcomes context driven? Matteo Ruggeri 1,2,3  · Carlo Drago 4 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract Economists consider personality as a non-cognitive asset that can have important conse- quences on individuals’ economic behavior. Van der Pol and Ruggeri showed, that risk attitude (RA) depends on whether individuals face choices regarding possible health gains in terms of life expectancy or quality of life. Here, we aim to explore this pattern by inves- tigating whether individuals’ RA may change depending on the perception of the social arrangements, cultural and economic context in which they are asked to imagine going to live. Our study shows that, concerning the health domain, signifcant diferences can be found in the RA of individuals imagining to experience a change in their set of social arrangements and standards of living. More specifcally, individuals tend to be more risk averse when they are asked to move toward a country with a diferent religion, a lower average income, a diferent distribution of wealth and standard of living. Keywords Risk attitude · Health domain · Standard gambles JEL Classifcation I12 · C91 · D81 1 Introduction Economists consider personality as a non-cognitive asset that can have important conse- quences on individuals’ economic behavior (Barsky et al. 1997) and a number of stud- ies investigates several personality traits within a diversity of domains (MacCrimmon and Wehrung 1990; Loewenstein and Prelec 1993; Weber 2002; Abdullahi et al. 2003). Whilst massive evidence exists on the extent to which personality traits are not stable over time (see for example Andersen et al. 2008) some literature suggests that culture, * Matteo Ruggeri matteo.ruggeri@unicatt.it Carlo Drago carlo.drago@unicusano.it 1 Istituto Superioree di Sanita, Rome, Italy 2 St. Camillus Inernational University of Health and Medical Sciences, Rome, Italy 3 Universita’ Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy 4 Università Niccolò Cusano, Rome, Italy